From Religious Peace To Religious War

December 03, 1995|By Stephen Chapman.

The United States is one of the most religious nations on Earth, with an atmosphere of freedom and tolerance that is without peer. So it may come as a surprise to learn that here, religion routinely gets the shaft. "Generations of students, parents, ministries and working Americans are deprived of their basic civil right to religious liberty," lamented Steven McFarland of the Christian Legal Society at a Senate hearing in October.

That is the view not of some crackpots on the fringe but of the religious right in general, whose allies in Congress have offered two different constitutional amendments to end this alleged mistreatment. One is sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), the other by Rep. Ernest Istook Jr. (R-Okla.). Hyde's proposal is bad, and Istook's is worse.

Hyde calls his the "Religious Equality Amendment," but mere equality is not what his supporters want. Religious people in many instances get preferential treatment from our laws and courts, and conservatives do not object. A teenager who wants to drop out of school after 8th grade because he'd rather get a job is not allowed to, but an Amish teenager acting on his religious beliefs may leave. Smoking peyote for fun is illegal; smoking it in a bona fide religious ceremony is not.

The idea that true religious liberty sometimes requires special treatment for religion is a sound one, enshrined in several Supreme Court decisions and in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. It says the government must exempt believers from complying with laws that conflict with their important religious obligations, unless it has a very powerful reason not to.

So religion is not exactly the red-headed stepchild of public policy. It has plenty of vigilant guardians in Congress and the courts. But Hyde and Istook see only the instances where believers don't get their way--like a recent lawsuit that the Supreme Court declined to review, in which a lower court rejected the plea of a high school student who was not allowed to write a research paper on her preferred topic, Jesus Christ. In truth, the cases in which the courts unjustly shortchange believers are rare, and you don't amend the Constitution just because the judiciary is right only 99 percent of the time.

The flip side of the special treatment often granted to religion is the special limits that apply to religion in the government realm. The 1st Amendment guarantees religious freedom, but it bans government promotion of religion. That has generally meant strict limits on providing tax funds to churches and on allowing religious devotionals in the public schools. But under these constitutional amendments, those limits would be summarily demolished.

The Hyde proposal is mostly about money. It bans "discrimination" against any person or group on the basis of "religious expression." That may sound harmless, but the effect would be to force the government to subsidize avowedly religious activities.

If the measure is ever passed, a school district that wants to provide vouchers usable at private schools will not be allowed to exclude religious schools whose chief mission is sectarian indoctrination. If it provides grants to non-profit groups to combat hunger or homelessness, it must allow churches equal access to the money--even if they provide such services in a thoroughly religious setting, complete with religious proselytizing.

Personally, I think parochial schools ought to be included in voucher programs. But it's one thing to say that policy is reasonable and quite another to say it should be constitutionally mandatory. Subsidies to religion are different from other subsidies--more divisive, more dangerous and more at odds with our fundamental traditions. To treat them differently is not discrimination but a recognition that church and state flourish best in separate gardens.

The Istook amendment would go beyond mere money to encourage public institutions to align themselves on the side of one faith or another. It would allow government "acknowledgments of the religious heritage, beliefs or traditions of the people"--which could mean crosses on state capitols, a Star of David on a Jewish suburb's city hall or a congressional resolution declaring America a Christian nation. It would sanction "student-sponsored prayer in public schools," which is an unsubtle way to let those in the majority force their form of faith on the minority.

Both amendments would guarantee years of litigation over matters that are now settled law, not to mention countless political battles at every level of government. The separation of church and state has managed to foster both religious vitality and religious peace. These measures will not be good for either.